Ooku Volume 1: Some Impressions

Fumi Yoshinaga’sOoku is set in an alternate Edo period Japan where the male population has been halved by an epidemic known as the Redpox with the women taking the majority of male societal roles as a result. Noah has a short synopsis and glowing review of the first volume at the previous HU site and is probably its most articulate proponent. In fact, his gushing enthusiasm for the series is the reason why I picked up a copy of volume 2 without even bothering to read the volume I had at hand.

I’m a bit more ambivalent about what I’ve read so far.

One of my problems withOoku is that it asks us to accept a logical leap of faith without sufficient justification: that a Japan reduced to a population consisting of 25% men would be ruled and dominated by women over the course of 3 Shogunates (80 years). The haste with which the scenario is dispensed to the readers in the initial pages of the first volume suggests that Yoshinaga is less concerned with the internal consistency of her scenario than with its final consequences.

Yoshinaga’s book has less to do with world building and plausible outcomes and more to do with gender commentary and the friction derived from the straight inversion of gender roles in Edo period Japan. One also suspects that a degree of titillation was envisioned in the portrayal of Snags performing traditionally female roles such as cleaning and embroidery work.

The initial pages of the first volume are particularly troublesome and we see Yoshinaga flailing around as she attempts to delineate the boundaries of her world as she decides to what extent a degree of fantasy and wish fulfilment will populate her work. In his blog entry, Noah suggests that:

“Yoshinaga messes with gender expectations too…but she also suggests that, even in this new world, there are gender realities which are going to be slow to change. The result is not so much an earthquake as a series of tremors; the furniture shifts, and a couple of things break, but you have to look twice to see just what has happened.”

There is some evidence of this but I’m not entirely convinced of the merits of the final outcome. The fencing scene between two inhabitants of the Inner Chamber is particularly troublesome in this respect. The sequence is meant to be counterpart to more traditional period dramas where the women of the court compete by way of their musical gifts. Here the more feminine accomplishments of the koto or shamisen are replaced with a more masculine virtue – a talent for swordplay, which itself is later deemed to be of little consequence compared to the benefits of exterior beauty.

This scene suggests that some aspects of male culture would continue to be held to strongly even in a female dominated society (an entirely plausible supposition) but is quite out of keeping with Yoshinaga’s scenario of “emasculated” men. In the light of a plot which posits docility (and why else would the men allow themselves to be herded) as the primary attribute of male culture, this entire sequence makes no sense whatsoever. Yoshinaga asks her readers to accept a world of men with normal sexual drives but without the associated aggression or violence (something difficult in itself to accept without some plot contrivance) and then presents her readers with a scene where the reverse is the case.

Mizuno’s introduction to his fellow courtiers of the Inner Chamber is also problematic. In this sequence, the inhabitants of the Inner Chamber squabble vociferously about attire, etiquette and personal hygiene. It’s a somewhat light hearted attempt to suggest that given the right circumstances, even men have the capacity to descend to a level of pettiness if not outright cattiness usually reserved for the generic depictions of women found in shows like Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City. Even an unabashedly commercial television series like ?? (i.e. Ooku; I’ll use the kanji for the TV series to differentiate it from the manga) has no truck with this being more concerned with the more believable political and romantic machinations of the inhabitants of the Inner Chamber than any stereotypical depictions of the same.

If there is any level of coherence in the manga, it must be in its portrayal of the women of the court. The idea of women in positions of power being forceful, manipulative and thoroughly devious is nothing new in such period dramas and Yoshinaga’s depiction of them is less clumsy if only because of the example of her predecessors. These women have never been depicted in popular culture solely as pitiful flowers. If anything, they are frequently seen to be every bit the match of men in the departments of vindictiveness, cunning and cruelty. Yoshinaga’s women as depicted in the first volume are considerably more benign, the conflicts here being more vocal, confrontational and exaggerated (in keeping with the demands of more commercial manga) than formal or surreptitious. The irritating faux medieval English translation only serves to highlight the modernity of the interactions between the characters in the manga.

The plotline concerning “the secret swain” towards the middle section of the book is better. It has some relation to the time honored device in such period pieces of court women being used and disposed of for perceived slights or indiscretions but the logic behind the institution as laid out in the manga is interesting and novel.

I’m hoping for better things with the second volume of Ooku. As it stands, this is a one trick pony with little to add to the host of stories concerning court intrigues, illicit affairs and betrayals which have been seen in any number of Asian television series. While I share Noah’s distaste for Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man (which has some similarities to Ooku), he at least made an attempt to create a fully imagined alternate reality consistent within its own boundaries. Future volumes of Ooku will be useful in gauging if there is any meat beneath all the feathers on display in this first volume.

7 Comments

“This scene suggests that some aspects of male culture would continue to be held to strongly even in a female dominated society (an entirely plausible supposition) but is quite out of keeping with Yoshinaga’s scenario of “emasculated” men. In the light of a plot which posits docility (and why else would the men allow themselves to be herded) as the primary attribute of male culture, this entire sequence makes no sense whatsoever. Yoshinaga asks her readers to accept a world of men with normal sexual drives but without the associated aggression or violence (something difficult in itself to accept without some plot contrivance) and then presents her readers with a scene where the reverse is the case.”

I’m not so sure about this. Ooku is set in Japan of the 1700s, remember, when Japan was extremely peaceful and men of the upper classes were encouraged to display their sophistication and culture; this was an era where poetry readings and tea tastings were treated as competitive sports.

The “fencing” scene is a display of physical fitness and cultured achievement rather than of potential violence; the samurai by this point were bureaucrats and courtiers, not warriors, and swordfighting was a ritualized status activity as much as a practical skill.

Also, it’s not a “straight inversion of gender roles”; it’s the Ooku itself that is most clearly gender-flipped, and the men of the Ooku do “cleaning and embroidery” because they are necessary for the upkeep of the Ooku or are services that were required of them as vassals of the Shogun, respectively.

I’m not 100% sold on Ooku at this point (just bought V2 but haven’t read it yet), but I am having fun finding the historical parallels (Yoshinaga seems to be following along with historical records fairly closely).

Hey JR. Nice to see you back again (I’m presuming you’re my Twilight nemesis…., yes?)

Suat, your main point is almost completely irrelevant to the enjoyment of the book for me, and your main subsidiary one I don’t find very convincing. Basically, I couldn’t really care much less about the historical accuracy of the world here. It seems to me fairly clear that Yoshinaga is working as much in the tradition of something like AA’ than in the vein of, say, Ursula K. Le Guin. She’s having fun playing with various historical ideas (as JRB says) but the main interest is very much in the evocation of emotions and relationships, not in trying to figure out “what would have happened” in any serious way.

I don’t find your claim that her gender relations are inaccurate very convincing either. As JRB says, you can spin these things various ways. In an honor bound culture like Japan, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to think that men would fulfill their duty — and in any culture, folks can be convinced to do most anything under threat of death, whether male or female. As I said in my review, I found the way she looked at gender bending very compelling and (emotionally) coherent, if not (obviously) historically demonstrable. The mix of frat boy jostling, old-maidish squabbling, and sexual tension fit seemed entirely believable from my own experiences and readings about all-male communities (locker rooms, prisons, etc.)

I think an off-hand comment you made in another comment thread is kind of telling; you, (like Kate Dacey, if I remember aright) see this as a middle-brow, Masterpiece theater costume drama, where the point is the evocation of the past; prosy melodrama. But that’s not how I experienced it. Rather, it seemed to me much closer to (again) AA’ or Ursula K. Le Guin’s books, both of which struck me as primarily poetic and evocative — languid poetry rather than costume melodrama.

In any case, it’s fun to have you point out some of the parallels (I didn’t catch the swordsmanship for singing contest, for example.) Maybe we can convince other Utilitarians to write about this and we can have a sort of slow motion roundtable over the next months!

“Hey JR. Nice to see you back again (I’m presuming you’re my Twilight nemesis…., yes?)”

Yes, Noah, I have returned! (Cue ominous music.)

Having not yet read volume 2 (and keeping myself deliberately unspoiled until I do), I have a small bet with myself that Ooku is going to go in an SF-ish alternate-universe direction, wherein Yoshinaga tries to keep within plausible reach of the historical documentation of the era. (My reason for this is largely the parallelism of Yoshimune’s actions with those of the actual Tokugawa Yoshimune.) I hope to have time to read V2 over the weekend; if I’m right I get to give myself a box of chocolate (If I’m wrong I have to do my laundry).

JR: Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion of the status of men and women (or politics)during the Tokugawa Shogunate but here’s the gist of my argument.

My main problem relates to the believability of the scenario presented in Yoshinaga’s manga. I just find it hard to believe that women would be able to subjugate the men without a high level of resistance and a contest of arms especially in the deeply chauvinistic society of early 1700s Japan (I suspect that Yoshinaga will have to address this at some point in her story).

It’s a matter of speculation whether they would even be given the opportunity to do so or even want to through all strata of society. In that sense, I might be mollified by a scenario which posits a far greater reduction in the male population. Since the manga has to do with imagined scenarios, your mileage in this respect may vary. I used to read quite a bit Science Fiction and the fundamental basis of a story is important to me up to a certain point.

Wouldn’t it be much more logical if women continued to serve the men in roles which they had been trained for since birth, especially in the context of a reduced male population? Perhaps the only modern day example of a possible reality would be the reduction/decimation of the young male population during the two World Wars (esp. the second).

Noah finds that this (disputable) flaw in logical consistency is unimportant and I understand why since his approach to the book has more to do with its emotional content and gender commentary. In general, that’s how I approach most art portraying period Japanese (like the television series I mention for example). It helps that most of these are relatively scrupulous with regards to historical accuracy. I think my take is slightly different from that of Dacey’s since I have no problems with slow BBC-like “prosy melodrama”. In certain ways, I prefer it and I find that Yoshinaga bows too much (in the early pages of her manga) to the exaggeration found in more commercial manga. In that sense, I like Reiko Okano’s portrayal of period Japan (though not the same era) in Onmyoji which puts Ooku in the shade as far as drawing is concerned.

As for the “slow motion roundtable” I would have thought that Kinukitty at least would be interested in this book. It’s more or less in her main area of expertise/interest as far as manga are concerned.